Five Crucial Organizing Tips

Feeling overwhelmed with organizing? Then you’ve come to the right place. I’m pretty good at keeping our home organized. It’s something that comes naturally. I put this list together for the more organization-challenged. These simple tips will help you think like an organizer.

If you haven’t quite figured out how to keep your home organized, start here. These basic tips will help you set up a system that works for you.

1. Know what you have

The whole point of organizing is knowing where you keep things. Before you do this, you need to know what you have. Lars is notorious for placing things in weird inconvenient places like the back of the coat closet and then when we are looking for it we can never find it and end up buying a replacement. Then about two months later when I’m organizing the coat closet I find the original thing I was looking for. It’s really a pain.

So take an inventory of your things. You don’t have to do this all at once, obviously. Try it gradually, maybe working on one room a week, and make note of the random things you have put away in odd places. Once you know what you have you can find a place for them.

2. Clean out your possessions regularly

When you are working on figuring out your inventory, it’s time to declutter. Get rid of excessive things, things you don’t use, and things you don’t need. This is easier said than done. A home with less clutter is much easier to organize.

I have a bin in the closet just for giveaway. Whenever I am organizing or tidying up and find things we don’t need or use I stick them in there. When it piles up we donate everything in the bin to Salvation Army or Purple Heart. Chances are you don’t need a lot of the things you have. You’ll be happy to be rid of them.

3. Keep clutter out of sight

I wrote a whole post on the secret to an organized home. The secret is to have a place for everything, that place being a bin or box or basket. If you are a lazy organizer, just keep everything in bins. All you have to do is literally throw them in the bin. And voila, you’ve got a decluttered and organized room.

The more organizing tendencies you have, the more useful you can make it. Keep things in boxes with other things in the same category. That will make it easier to find. Don’t remember where you put the glue away? Well, it has to be in the craft bin! That’s where craft supplies go. It’s as simple as that.

4. Keep function in mind

Before you implement an organizing system, think about using it in your everyday life. Will it be complicated and difficult for you? I keep my dress shoes on the top shelf of our closet. This works fine, because I only wear them each about once a month. My regular daily sandals I keep on a mat by the door or in a basket under the bench by the foot of our bed. Easy access.

So, moral of the story: don’t keep things you use regularly in a place that’s hard to reach, and don’t keep things you use rarely in a prime easy location. If it makes sense and it’s convenient, you will actually keep things organized. If it’s inconvenient you will never put anything away.

5. Make use of all space

Don’t let any space go to waste. The space above a door? Great spot for a shelf. Under the bed? One of my favorite storage spaces. Closet system doesn’t work for your wardrobe? Customize it.

All the best organizing solutions give you a new way to use a place you didn’t think of using. Over the door hooks, cabinet doors, the top of your closet, above the door, hanging above the sink, what have you. So look around at all the empty space in your home and think of whether you can use it. Chances are, you can.

Comments

Great tips. I used to live in a small trailer with 2 kids and it was imparitive that everything had double duty…for use and for storage! Once in a bigger house…I am still that way…don’t see any reason to change! Amazing how little one REALLY needs and how much one really DOESN’T need!

Great tips! For me however, putting things in baskets simply does not work unless the baskets are see-through; if I don’t see the contents of that basket, I forget what’s in it even when I put a tag to identify the basket.

The container store has a whole section of cabinet organizers. We got ours at a rummage sale. Target, home goods, and other stores should have cabinet organizers as well. If you read my post about kitchen organization I link to some of the items.

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